


Falling, Falling, Gone

by unholygrass



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Whump, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Trauma, Fear of Heights, Flashbacks, Gen, Good Parent Hank Anderson, Hank Anderson & Connor Friendship, Poor Connor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 21:32:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16437185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unholygrass/pseuds/unholygrass
Summary: Hank discovers Connor's fear of heights and where it stems from.





	Falling, Falling, Gone

**Author's Note:**

> It's short, its messy, it was fun. Idk. If you have questions feel free to ask. Once again I changed my username from Spitfire00 to UnholyGrass so if you're confused that's still me. I think Connor has trauma and it doesn't magically go away and I think you gotta work through that shit to figure it out and you can't just ignore it and this is also the author calling the kettle black so here we go

On Tuesday, December 2, 2039, Connor finds that he is afraid of heights.

 

It’s a homicide/suicide that drags them out of bed at five in the morning and into Hank’s frozen car. Connor takes the liberty to scrape the inch of ice off the windshield while Hank fought the coffee machine in a nobel battle of wills. By the time the engine is warm and the snow is brushed off, Hank finally comes shuffling out of the front door, travel mug in hand. He climbs into the passenger side and allows Connor to drive simply because it’s too fucking early to argue and he’d rather focus on not falling asleep instead.

 

The ride to the crime scene is full of muted news chatter that neither of them pay any attention to, and by the time they pull up in front of the apartment building, the sun is peeking over the horizon timidly, casting pink across the sparkling ice.

 

They’re greeted by Officer Grant and Gutiara, a pair of rookies that Connor enjoys watching just because no one calls them by their correct names and the resulting interactions are always amusing. They’re kind though, so Connor makes the effort to properly greet them after Hank botches their titles completely.

 

They have the entire front of the street blocked off around where one of the bodies had fallen and died. There’s little evidence to pull there, and they move on quickly after getting a good look.

 

Their murder is located on the rooftop, and the ride up seventy-seven stories is quiet save for the quiet spinning of Connor’s coin on his knuckle. Hank glares at him, but doesn’t say anything, and this time when he tries to snatch it, Connor is ready and plays keep away until Hank gives up and lets him be.

 

There’s too many officers mulling about to really be productive, Connor decides almost immediately, and he recognizes that most of them have probably only come to the scene of the crime to get out of the harsh winter snow. Connor can’t find any fault in them for that. He doesn’t like the cold either, and for him it doesn’t even result in pain.

 

His problem doesn’t make itself known until they are outside, two dead bodies freezing over on the concrete roof, blood melting through the slick ice. It’s stupidly windy, and Connor frowns. He cannot see much reason beyond isolation to murder someone up here. It simply seems inconvenient. Hank is by the railing of the building, curiously looking over the icy city below to see how their perp jumped. Connor joins him on instinct, and immediately regrets it.

 

_He’s running, synthetic muscles propelling him forward with as much momentum as he can possibly gather within the few short feet. Emma is screaming— arms reaching out for him even as her body falls backwards, skinny legs kicking as she flailed against the impenetrable arm wrapped around her. Connor has already preconstructed this— he knows he will reach her in time— he would have never have let it come this close to disaster if he knew he didn’t have this last option to fall back on. His processors kick into their highest gear, thirium pumping to the limit as he pressed against the barriers of what this body was capable of._

 

_He reaches her and uses his momentum to switch their positions. She will land hard, and had he been more efficient, he may have been able to avoid that outcome. He will be better next time._

 

_And then he’s falling, gone over the edge of the building and impossibly weightless. He will be destroyed. It will take exactly 3.19 seconds for him to reach the ground, and the impact will render him irreparable. It’s an unfortunate consequence to his inefficiency._

 

_A human may not have the consciousness to process such a sensation of falling so many stories, but Connor is a supercomputer wrapped in skin and limbs, and if he wished, he could practically freeze time— buy himself a few more thoughts, a few more moments of clarity._

 

_He does not bother._

 

_He closes his eyes._

 

He pushes back from the railing fast and hard, nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste to get away from the edge. His foot catches on a patch of ice, and while the slip is short and instantly corrected by his impeccable motor skills, the terror that shoots up his spinal cables is so sharp that it knocks all the thoughts out of his head.

 

_Falling, falling, gone._

 

“Whoa— what the fuck? Connor,” There’s hands on his arms, righting him after his stumble, tight and assuring. He can’t tear his eyes off the edge— he certainly doesn’t want to be looking at it either, but if it’s in his eyesight then he can’t accidentally go tumbling over the edge while it’s behind him— which should be impossible— he’s already rendered the entire roof into a 3D projection, he knows exactly where he is— but—

 

“Connor? Kid, hey, what the fuck?” Hank gives him a little shake to get his attention, and that is _all_ kinds of not okay. Connor reaches out on instinct, clamping down on the Lieutenant’s forearms in a vice grip, like he can keep him from pushing him over— over that edge— _the Lieutenant wouldn’t push you over the edge, what the fuck is wrong with you, you’re a good five feet away—_

 

“Connor!”

 

He finally manages to snap his gaze away from the railing to look at his partner. Hank’s brows are drawn in concern and his sharp blue eyes are boring into him, searching him up and down like he expects to find him riddled with bullets or soaked in thirium. It’s not that unreasonable an assumption. Connor blinks back at him.

 

“Yes?”

 

“What the fuck? You’re freaking out on me.”

 

At first Connor wants to deny it— to try to play it all off, simply disappear back down to the car and work with what he’s already gathered from the scene. He doesn’t want to work through the terror thrumming in the back of his skull or the anxiety making his synthetic heartbeat quicken as though preparing for a fight. He wants to pretend and forget— wants to ignore these emotions and these pointless _fears._

 

But Hank was not a stupid man, and he wouldn’t let Connor off so easily. He also couldn’t find the will to let go of the Lieutenant’s arms yet, lest he accidentally stumble backwards and _down— falling, falling—_

 

“I believe I may have a fear of heights, Lieutenant.” He’s proud of how steady his voice comes out despite his regulator having reduced its power in a pointless attempt to converse processing power for an inevitable fight or flight.

 

God, the need to keep oneself alive was very obnoxious.

 

“You’re fuckin’ joking.” Hank snorted at him, glancing back at the ledge in disbelief. It had taken a few weeks to adapt to Connor’s dry sense of humor, and it meant that sometimes Hank really couldn’t tell when Connor was dicking around or not.

 

“No, I’m not.” He tightens his grip on Hank’s arms, looking back at where the ledge loomed.

 

_Falling, falling, gone._

 

He squeezes his eyes shut. He can’t look at it any longer. He needs to look at it, needs to know where it is— but he can’t—

 

“Well, shit.” Hank is fumbling, obviously not quite sure with what to do. “Okay. Well.”

 

_Mission Accomplished._

 

He shudders harshly, all the way from his teeth to his toes, hunching forward as his spine curved.

 

“Fuck, okay. Let’s go back inside. Come on.” Hank’s tugging on him gently, just the smallest of motions, not enough to jostle him. Connor keeps his eyes shut— he already knows exactly where to put his feet, but the Lieutenant wraps an arm around his back and leads him back indoors anyway. Only once he feels the firm concrete of the rooftop change into the plush carpet of the penthouse does he dare open his eyes. The room was dark, blinds already drawn for the use of black lights. Hank leads him into a back bedroom empty of officers and sits him down on the bed, a frown twisting his face. Connor looks down to where his hands lay in his lap. For some reason he expected them to be shaking. They do not.

 

“Alright, talk to me kid. What the hell’s going on in that big brain of yours, huh?” Hank has moved a desk chair and now sits in front of him, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his knees.

 

Connor closes his hands into fists before looking up, absentmindedly watching as his stress levels slowly lowered with each passing second. “I believe I am afraid of heights.”

 

“Yeah, I caught that part. _Why_ though, is my question. You don’t have any other weird irrational fears. Is it a deviancy thing?”

 

Connor’s already shaking his head before the lieutenant finishes speaking, only to realize that then Hank will want to know, and he isn’t sure he can recount the story.

 

Hank’s still looking at him with those sharp eyes. They’d come so far— he owed Hank an explanation for his ridiculousness, even if he can’t look him in the eye when he says it. “My first mission after I was deployed was a hostage negotiation in midtown, on top of an eighty-story building.” He forces his hands to relax. “I was unable to talk the deviant down, and in order to save the hostage I threw myself off the building with him.”

 

He lets his fingers go to his coat pocket to twiddle with his coin, slipping it in between his fingers as he focused on staying in the moment, and not _falling, falling—_

 

“Jesus fucking _Christ,_ Connor—” The distress in the lieutenant's voice has his eyes snapping back up. Hank was rubbing his hands roughly over his face and he seemed to be struggling to process that information. “Oh, my fuckin’ god.”

 

Connor felt he should say something, but before he gets the chance to decide just what that something is, Hank is speaking again. “You threw yourself off the fucking _building_?”

 

He wasn’t expecting defensiveness to be among the emotions this talk would invoke, but that’s what’s bubbling on the back of his tongue anyway. “I hadn’t planned to, but all my other attempts at calming him failed, and the actions of the SWAT team where only agitating him further. It was—” Hank’s shaking his head vigorously at him, and Connor cuts himself off.

 

“I don’t care why, Connor— I, fuck—” He takes a deep breath before leaning forward, close enough to touch. “Connor, that’s super fucked up. I know you weren’t deviant at the time, but you still have those memories, right?”

 

Now Connor is sure he doesn’t understand. “Yes...”

 

“Fuck. Okay, then you have got to tell someone about that shit, kid. That’s not an irrational fear. That’s a fear born from trauma.” When Connor immediately goes to protest, Hank silences him with a hand. “You can’t just ignore trauma like that. It’ll eat you alive. I’m a living example of that.”

 

Now it’s Connor’s turn to be distraught. He brings his coin out fully, pinging it from hand to hand as he thought that over. He was an android— the fears humans had were both very different and very similar to the fears he found residing within himself. When looking at his situation objectively, it was easy to see that... yes, he had experienced what could be classified as trauma, but he wasn’t sure if the reactions and emotions he dealt with daily where concocted off such. He had an entire internet’s knowledge of psychiatry, but no personal experience to compare to, and in the end, that left him tetherless, cast out to sea with no land in sight.

 

Hank drew him back out of his thoughts. “Look, you gotta start telling someone about that shit that you’ve got buried in there, or this kind of thing is going to become more common.” Hank punctuated his point by poking Connor square on the forehead with the tip of his finger. “I don’t care if it’s me or Markus or whoever, but you can’t just sit on it. You know I’m no good with this emotional shit, but I’ll fucking listen, kid. I can listen real fuckin’ well, in fact. Just... trust me when I say that you can’t just swallow it down. It’s a part of the whole emotional package— some of them are destructive, and throwing yourself off a building? That’s one of them.”

 

Connor found himself nodding even as he continued to process the lieutenant’s words. He supposed that if anyone knew of destructive tendencies, it would be Hank. A bit of a double standard, but Connor thinks he’s starting to understand those. After all, he’d happily have Hank process his emotional trauma through Connor’s listening ear, even if he himself never wished to reciprocate the action and spill his own struggles. It’s not hard to believe that the other man would feel similarly.

 

Hank was still watching him. “Yeah?”

 

Connor nodded again, more firmly this time, before responding. “Yeah.”

 

If nothing else, it was something to consider. Perhaps he would research it. He had no doubt that Hank knew what he was talking about— his own personal trauma alone, the man was a police lieutenant working in the homicide department. There was no doubt in his mind that he’d seen any shortage of emotionally disturbed people who never overcome the loss of their family. It was a scene Connor himself was slowly becoming accustomed to. Recognizing some of those troubling behaviors in Hank had been easy, but why couldn’t he apply those ideas to himself?

 

Perhaps he just needed more time. Perhaps he just needed to adapt further— listen to Hank and begin to shift through the experiences he still has hovering in the back of his mind, of bullets and SWAT teams and clones. Of deaths and CyberLife and the Garden.

 

He knew better than to expect those things to just up and disappear now that he’d started building his own life, and from the way Hank was looking at him, the Lieutenant was thinking the same thing.

 

It was good advice, even if the idea of it made him uncomfortable.

 

Hank stood wrapped an arm around his shoulders when he mirrored the motion on instinct. “Good. Then let’s get to work.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please review!


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